Can of Worms
by Homeslice
Summary: He will sew your empty rib cage. -Fill it with yarn and strings and tangles. They find in each other nothing they need, but much of what they want. And that's close enough, isn't it?- JuubeixKazuki, ToshikixJuubei, ToshikixJuubeixKazuki


1Summary: He will sew your empty rib cage. (Fill it with yarn and strings and tangles. They find in each other nothing they need, but much of what they want. And that's close enough, isn't it?)

Disclaimer: I do not own GetBackers.

Pairings: Juubei/Kazuki, Juubei/Toshiki

- - - -

Now I'm telling you

Don't lie to your friends, don't lie for your friends

Silent till the end

You're your own firing squad, condemned yourself to die

Seaweed suicide seaweed

Truth and justice aside, liberty is a lie.

(Truth is what you fear.)-'Seaweed', Versus

- - - -

.10

The hem of Kazuki's skirt floats freely in the rush of wind, jagged lines of it ripped free and spare strings taking their first breaths of separation from the cloth. They gather on the ground, like dead serpents, and Juubei slides one across the floor with the toe of his foot.

It is quiet; uninterrupted in the room, which remains shattered and messy and scattered like the locks of hair, much longer now than Juubei remembered (even from just a few moments ago, you think), across Kazuki's shoulders. An old, ragged quilt covers up the broken window, and flaps recklessly in the breeze, a heart-beat sort of sound that repeats until the noise is lost on them.

Juubei feels awkward here, now, but Kazuki lets a little sigh slip past his lips and just like that, he is suited to the room. Every loose thread outlining the edges of skirt-shirt-face brings out the tattered cloth of the quilt over the window, every puff of hot breath in the evening air sets the room more freezing. Kazuki could fit in anywhere, and Juubei thinks for one wild, silent moment of youthful passion and foolish ideal that that is why he loves him, Juubei to Kazuki.

('Just like this.')

- - - -

.9

The first interruption of Kazuki that Juubei experiences is Toshiki, who, Kazuki claims outright, is beautiful– whether in fighting, or in the sharp, carved lines of his face. Kazuki touches many people, but for those first, painful weeks of intermission between acceptance and hostility Juubei notices Kazuki's affection towards Toshiki the most, perhaps more than his own.

It is this realization that makes him stop, and after one of the numerous battles while Kazuki dusts himself off somewhere behind them and tucks his hair demurely behind an ear (as if to mock that delicacy he so carries– to make those who do not know him properly believe for a handful of moments that he is weak, fragile, some pitifully sculpted stereotype of a school-girl), Juubei holds out his hand in an ironic mockery of the pose he strikes years, years later and Toshiki takes it, fingers curling around wrists and palms sliding slick with sweat over opposing skin, and pulls him up.

They do not speak to each other much, he and Toshiki, whether or not because they do not want to, or because there is a certain air of purposeful wordlessness surrounding them that they oblige willfully. Juubei does not know– one way or the other, he sews his mouth shut in the fear that one day Kazuki might do it for him, and Toshiki crosses his arms over his chest and snorts at the situation in it's entirety.

Once they entire the makeshift head quarters for themselves, Kazuki pulls off his shoes as if it were a floored home, and Juubei shuffles through their supply of medicines and pulls out rolls of bandages to use. He wraps Kazuki's injuries first, with quiet, tentative worship that is nearly ridiculous, and gentle hands working for a smile. Kazuki laughs at his efforts, makes some teasing, childhood-days comment to him and stands up steadily and strong and hesitant-less. But it is with Toshiki that Juubei remembers the most years later, the roughness of his hands as Juubei bandaged the cuts and bruises on some of the calloused fingers, the thick muscle underneath the skin that Juubei himself has yet to build, but will in time.

They twitch when they brush spots to intimate, wince at the harsher touches, and feed off each other with a sort of bemused, uncomfortable need. Juubei figures it out later, because later he has a lot of time to think of everything– when Kazuki is gone, and Toshiki gone, and Juubei left behind.

That and then, is when he understands. Protecting Kazuki is a lonely job, and their schoolboy natures and mismatching, awkward bodies perhaps not suited for it.

But at the time, he realizes none of this, and Juubei continues running his hands over the display of fresh bruises on Toshiki's arm, sliding him a small quirk of lips, and listening to Kazuki hum the old songs he once played on the koto as a child, when they were young, and things were so blatantly beautiful.

- - - -

.8

"Juubei," Kazuki says. It is quiet in the room again, like always– medicines and bandages and wounds carefully tucked away like sweet kisses and secretive smiles (everything they abide by, should they hide it so well). His hands are on Juubei's forehead, brushing away sweat-soaked hair that's color dulls with time; then, it still retains some of it's richness, it's shine, but unknowingly, that richness and shine leaks like water out of broken pipelines, shameless, obligatory, inevitable. (Approximately six weeks later, though you remain pleasantly, joyously ignorant of it, your hair will feel like straw to your fingers, it's boyish softness all but gone completely, and the new men and women of your life will smile obliviously and not know anything of it's previous texture.

You will think you prefer it that way, dabbing with the edge of a napkin at your leaking heart in the middle of your chest, somewhere along the seam-line.)

Juubei does not have the audacity to tilt into that caress, but he lets himself close his eyes and Kazuki's touches soften even more, his posture relaxing contentedly ('you need to rest more, Juubei' he notes, casually at first– and you do not know how to tell him that it is impossible for you to, when there is so much to do, and so many things you feel obliged to protect). "Do you like Uryuu, Juubei?"

Any loss of tension he might've had a moment ago dissipates, shoulders tightening and fingers jerking against the cement of the floor, and Juubei swallows back a grimace. Kazuki asks too difficult of questions. Always ones that he himself is not sure of the answer to, but still is so required to answer to.

"Y-you ask too difficult of questions."

Kazuki straightens, and Juubei wordlessly removes his head from his lap. Toshiki is gone; disappeared off because he is not as obliged to Kazuki nor as obsessed, and Juubei, distantly, could envy him for it (_could_). He misses the softness of Kazuki's clothing against his skin and the warmth of Kazuki's flesh beneath him already, and it sickens him.

Kazuki mutely rearranges the fabric of his skirt, lips pursed (and what is worse is the rush of thoughts throughout your head, the 'have I angered him?'s, the premature 'will he forgive me?'s. How long has it been since you have been your own man– and would you feel twice as content with individuality as you might have then if you were to receive it again now?

You know the answer to that). "I didn't find anything so hard about it, Juubei." Kazuki replies– not angry, no (frustrated, but you absently ask yourself how much better that is than the other options). Juubei notes the differences in expression; the wrinkle at his forehead, the twitch at the corner of his mouth that Juubei would like to run his fingers across. They are the things he remembers the best when Kazuki is gone from his line of sight, but that is not then, and he pushes the images to a near-by place within his head.

"I am..." Juubei pauses, and mulls over the possibilities within his words. He is hesitant with his honesty at that time, though it is a quality he later drops regardless; now he sees it as something wonderfully self-sacrificial, if the lies are easier for Kazuki to swallow. He does not lie, however, and watches the truth slip out and mingle with the cold breaths of air, the Winter breeze that nips at the edges of his fingertips and nibbles on the open skin. "Not sure of my own thoughts on Uryuu."

It is silent for a moment, as Kazuki ponders over a reply, and Juubei watches Kazuki's breath ice over in the air, the gentle rise and fall of his chest. Kazuki leans down, and quietly seats himself next to Juubei, aligning fingers, hands, hips, thighs, feet.

"Oh." Kazuki says, voice and words like a child's again, almost amazed. Juubei smiles openly and lets Kazuki see it, lets him run his fingers across it, memorizing, touching, becoming familiar again, and again, and again, with everything that is rare and beautiful in the world.

A hushed rain begins to fall outside, and they curl into each other's heat like children, and wait for Toshiki to arrive back.

- - - -

.7

It is loud, obnoxious in the room. There is enough noise that it is very nearly tangible; Juubei can taste it blandly in the back of his throat, can smell the sweat and odor of human bodies and well-worked emotion, can hear it so clearly that it makes his ears ring and his chest constrict, his thoughts silence in the fear of not being heard anyway. And Kazuki is well enough alone, smiling at him still from the other corner of the room, Toshiki at his left and another follower at his right (wing-men– and once, you remember, you had offered Kazuki the chance of learning how to fly).

The smile is sweet, and Juubei chokes. Cheap beer and spittle slop down from the corners of his mouth onto the front of his shirt, and he curses quietly, usual apathetic faces lost in the heat, the noise, the unbreakable tension that builds. He would not normally drink, and later he sees it as foolishness, but he desperately needs something to stretch out the knots of his muscles, the tight, locked way he holds his shoulders, now.

He sets down the can of liquor he holds in his hand and forgets about it completely. It's relatively clear and he absently hopes that it will soak into the fabric of his shirt, be unnoticeable later to Kazuki.

It is a celebration of sorts, rounded up in haste and youthful simplicity, in one of the crumbled, broken old buildings that Infinity Fortress held so much of. It looks the same as their home.

It looks the same.

(And so you will quietly seat yourself in a corner of the room opposite from Kazuki, as far away from him as you can get, and make yourself fade into the familiar cement walls and broken window panes, to disappear, and fall away. You think 'and maybe I already am', and the bitterness of it leaves a taste with strength and chalky tangibility that the alcohol would never hold for you. You need that solidity, you crave it; and so you spend the next many years holding it tightly gripped in the shell of your hand, afraid of losing it.

You have already lost many things, so eventually it will leave you, as well.)

Kazuki is lost in the crowd of his new supporters (and do they truly respect him, or merely fear him?– that is the answer you are looking for), brown hair and cream-colored clothes easily blending into brighter colors, like a grain of white salt in a sea of sand. There is, ever, no possible comparison, though Toshiki's bright hair and slight difference in height gains him Juubei's eye at the back of his neck.

Toshiki, seemingly feeling it, turns around for one small moment disappearing in the rest, like Kazuki in the wide ocean of his followers, like salt inside sand. And the slight upward curve of one side of his lips, brilliant in it's rarity, lovely in it's pattern, flows out over Toshiki's face and is similarly lost. Juubei does not remember this years later, and nor does it stand out to him here.

He gives a quick, slightly irritable smile-grimace back, wipes at the wetness of his shirt, and tries relentlessly to breathe, but does not inhale for over two years.

- - - -

.6

Kazuki has many supporters (most of them which are, much later, converted hand-in-hand under the Lightning Lord's new, freshened reign like shifting your stance from one hip to the other), and their numbers continue to grow like daisies out of an aged winter snow. They, like Juubei, are awed by his power and his brilliance, are won over by his convincing smile and demure, careful way he holds himself.

Juubei pretends not to see the wandering eyes in crowds full of mostly men, who do not have women and have not had women for laughable amounts of time– but Toshiki loathes them for it (you could almost understand– because it can not possibly be fair to have to share Kazuki with more than you have already had to share him with– but you do not, not at all), and Kazuki, who is above all, not ignorant, pretends pleasantly that he _is_ ignorant.

They have moved houses (one hip to the other), though the buildings differ little. In Infinity Fortress, everything is the same, meant to trick and mock in every cobblestone and broken window and block of cement. Juubei understands this well, but he does not pretend to not be uneasy with it.

Instead, he shifts uncomfortably on the thin mattress pad laid on the floor, that smells of dust and death, and watches Kazuki run a comb through the long tendrils of his hair. He remembers, distantly, that it had been one Kazuki had had for years, given to him by his mother (and you remember her– a graceful woman, like a pale white tiger plucked of it's teeth, set at the feet of lords and rulers and given shoes, garb, silks and lace; Kazuki has forgotten her face, the thin lines of her nose, the high, delicate cheekbones, but you have not, you will not ever forget it, but you will forget his.

And when he asks you of her, and of what you remember of her, you simply shrug, and apologize, and tell him you too have been able to forget).

"Uryuu, can you comb it in the back?" Toshiki stiffens in surprise, but his hands take the comb from Kazuki, awkwardly gentle. Kazuki smiles, that slow, sincere smile as sweet as fresh honey to the tongue, and Toshiki swallows it, drinks it, basks in the radiance of it.

(When you meet him again, years later, you will say he is the same, but he is not the same. His hair will be ever longer, and his fragrance not of sweet vanilla and smoky, ash incense but of soap and grass and the awkward, quiet scent of ripened plums, organic but lacking their usual sweetness. And he will have this newfound something, this sudden, continual loss of femininity. You think you could love him that way.)

Juubei feels his muscles work themselves into knots, feels his lips twitch silently and compulsively. He watches Toshiki's hand meet the barest inches of Kazuki's skin as he hands him back his mother's comb, both sets of fingers equally pale and over-worked as the next, but one largely more beautiful than the other (you, however, are not quite sure of which that is, not yet.

Not yet).

- - - -

.5

The Lightning Lord is a man of grace, like a see-through angel walking throughout their broken, desolate earth and pretending it is solid enough for him. Juubei is in awe at him– is reminded of those first, fresh moments of long ago when he had his first glimpse of Kazuki, little clear string wrapped around his finger showing more warning and more strength than Juubei had ever experienced (somehow, that is what you remember most).

The Lightning Lord does not smile, and his expression is painted on like a picture– insincere, liquid-like. It droops around the edges and Juubei's hands twitch, wanting to take the corners of his lips and push them upwards back to their starting place.

Everything, he believes, needs a fresh start.

This, here, is his new beginning– and Kazuki's– and he feels the pressure bubble at his sides, that 'this is your second chance, and you only get one of them, now' type of feeling, something graceless and offensive. But it is freshened, like re-applied face powder– and he thinks maybe this new beginning is not as new, but is merely lipstick on an animal, fresh yet familiar, similar to all the other previous starts.

Kazuki smiles at him, not so far away this time– if he scooted over a few inches, their hands would touch, and Juubei takes a comfort in it to cure the so-called aching of his rotted chest, like a tree stump scraped free of it's middle (things will nest there, you think, but just as the tree is no more whole with the owl nested in it's center, you are no more complete with the cobwebs clinging to the old flesh of past memories you do no longer want to remember).

He takes those few inches, scoots closer, makes their hands meet inappropriately but alive and young like the first time again. Juubei lets himself do these things, lets himself be foolishly closer to someone he is already inseparable from, because it is something that for that moment he is so certain he needs.

Toshiki is gone.

- - - -

.4

It does not take long, Juubei thinks, when he looks at it from afar. Perhaps it is like a stack of dominoes, he himself balance precariously, wobbling but determined (or perhaps cursed) to stand. He should've noticed the pattern, like how he notices the patterns Kazuki's hands make with his words, or the patterns of his eyes, mischievous and demure like bubbled water. But he did not notice, perhaps, in ways, does not notice now; and the blackness of the surrounding room is neither comforting nor reassuring.

Kazuki's lack of presence hangs in the air like a ghost. It crams it's sickly fingers down Juubei's throat, silent and choking, and he gags before he gasps.

It seems so painfully unnecessary– he has done nothing wrong, not besides the occasional neglective attitude, the sometimes-coldness, the off-and-on bitter after taste, but it is much less than the sins which others have committed here, he thinks, and that is the truth. They do not get punished for it, and instead, he sits undeserving as the rain beats and pours itself out onto the cement, loud and outrageous sounding through the still-broken windows. He takes some sort of ludicrous, compulsive comfort in the flapping of the cloth over the open doorway, and watches for slender silhouettes that are not really there.

('And when I open my eyes next, allow me to be washed away by the storm.' You think. You remember Kazuki's mother then, once more, her sleeves trailing after her like strings on a kite, her gentle laugh like spring breeze. You see her kind eyes, her loving smile, but this time you do not note her unusual, calming grace nor her bemusing beauty, but in how her ankles are spotted with the same array of freckles as Kazuki's, in how her eyes highlight your faults, making you feel naked, in how her smile is as brightly blinding as a cloudless day. And you fall in love with him all over again.)

"Kazuki," Juubei murmurs, quietly, and the sound of it is lost into the pouring rain. It, in it's silence, is the last time he hears the name for years.

- - - -

.3

Juubei is left, ironically, in the same place he had started in. But this time, he stands solitary by MakubeX's side, and does not note the loneliness nor it's dull embitterment, the washed-out tugs of his chest strings pulling, tightening (one day they will snap, and, entirely, you will be lost). The sounds of typing is insincere, mechanical, but nearly soothing. Sakura sits by MakubeX's side, legs folded under her tracing circles with her finger tip onto the square of rose-colored cloth spread out over her lap, her eyes closed against the bright, sterile lighting of the room.

Juubei leans his head back and stares open-eyed at the lights until his eyes hurt too much to register the tone, and then he blinks back the blur of his vision, gazing straight ahead again. Waiting is lonely, as well, but the gentle ambition of the gesture is enough to dull the depth of his wounds (and these, you understand, are ones not soothed by the whiteness of bandages, not quieted nor calmed by foreign herbs and uncommon elixirs, and they continue bleeding throughout the years without ever bringing you a death– pain, you can manage, but not this unfamiliar, consuming emptiness, a hole too far and too great to ever push through).

"Soon, Juubei," MakubeX starts, breaking his gaze from the computer screen to Juubei's face, noticeably not the eyes, but the sharpened, curved lines of his jaw (you believe the stabbings of your wounds carved heavily the lines of you). He does not finish the sentence, but instead gives an almost hesitant, tentative sort of glance to Juubei's expression, to the way he will flinch.

"Juubei?" Sakura asks, following MakubeX's look up to her brother, her tone and eyes speaking volumes of 'is this alright?' (and you think 'yes, yes it is', and would like to smile at her with some false reassurance, though the stiffness of your brow and the lost curve of your lips would simply not allow it).

Juubei nods, and clenches his fist barely against the side of his thigh. The knowledge of Kazuki's presence almost takes his breath away.

- - - -

.2

Fudou's angered, frustrated shufflings of feet distract, make him absently note the irritation and the way the other man growls under his breath. Juubei is not half so blatantly impatient, but instead allows himself to tremble slightly in the lines of his hands and the sudden weakness of his knees, quiet and calm even when disturbed. He is nervous, alight, and the memory of smell wafts into his mind; he smells vanilla and plums all at the same time, old and new, something distinctly Kazuki, something _there _and believable.

He wants more, but knows it is enough. He is a man prepared for what is about to happen, for the murder of his best friend and, at the same time, the man who more than anything he would like to hold and love and touch and caress, to run his hands curiously, like a child, across the lines of, and it frightens him, then, that contrast, that realization.

But he understands it. And in those moments, all is not well, but all is meticulously, suspiciously comfortable, like the calm before the storm, except not, because it is so _willing. _

Juubei believes, quietly, understated, in the solution (you have to be _repaired_).

- - - -

.1

The hem of Kazuki's shirt floats freely in the rush of wind, jagged lines of it ripped free and spare strings taking their first breaths of separation from the cloth. They gather on the ground, like dead serpents, and Juubei slides one across the floor with the toe of his foot.

The desert breathes of the canyon make sand and dust stir and then settle, like inhalations. Quietly, so quiet, that Juubei feels if only he wanted it he could break the silence with the back of his hand in a slap. There is no noise, except the heavy breathing forcefully hushed, and the broken figments of the past (you can hear them– drip, they make a sound like bleeding).

"Kazuki," he says, and the freshness of the name on his lip trembles, and Kazuki catches that tremble, like zooming in on a particular detail of a picture, like catching a dew-drop falling off a leaf on your finger from the most recent storm. "Kazuki," he says again (_'I thought we were friends, didn't we think that?_', but you do not say it, instead you cram four fingers into your mouth and bite down like a man anticipating the pain).

He has nothing to say.

The canyon voices itself, overwhelming and large, and Juubei breathes in it, the mixed smells of Kazuki and blood and sweat and dust, and it clings to them, stern and there and almost believable. He breathes in it, and makes his decision.

Five minutes later, he stumbles out of the illusion with Kazuki's arms wrapped around him, secure and loving and tightening, and he finds that their reassurance and the dizzy loss of blood allows him to take a final breath of canyon air, to stare out into the fake-world.

Kazuki is coated with the markings of their battle, and he smells like copper. But when Juubei looks down at him, he smiles, and Juubei finds himself smiling back, like cracking open an ancient chest sticky with the glue holding it closed and the cobwebs showing it's under use. But it is there, and he lets himself free-fall into it, taking the plunge or the dive or however it would be named, and feels, for the first time in years, good.

The sound of their footsteps is not like bleeding, and the lines of Kazuki's face are still distinctly familiar. When Juubei thinks about MakubeX, he would like to believe that it, like the canyon, was all an illusion– Toshiki's absence and Kazuki's easy leavings and all the blood they've spilled, but it's not, and he thinks he's okay with that.

He's okay.


End file.
